Alcestis
Euripides
Euripides. The Plays of Euripides, Translated into English Prose from the Text of Paley. Vol. I. Coleridge, Edward P., translator. London: George Bell and Sons, 1906.
- Yea, for I see thy heart is set on length of days.
- Is it not to save thyself thou art carrying to the tomb this corpse?
- A proof of thy cowardice, thou craven heart!
- At any rate her death was not due to me; this thou canst not say.
- Ah! mayst thou some day come to need my aid!
- Woo many wives, that there may be the more to die.
- That is thy reproach, for thou didst refuse to die.
- Dear is the light of the sun-god, dear to all.
- A coward soul is thine, not to be reckoned among men.
- No laughing now for thee at bearing forth my aged corpse.
- Thy death will surely be a death of shame, come when it will.
- Once dead I little reck of foul report.
- Alas! how void of shame the old can be!
- Hers was no want of shame; ’twas want of sense in her that thou didst find.
- Begone! and leave me to bury my dead.
- I go; bury thy victim, thyself her murderer. Her kinsmen yet will call for an account. Else surely has Acastus ceased to be a man, if he avenge not on thee his sister’s blood.
- Perdition seize thee and that wife of thine!
- grow old, as ye deserve, childless, though your son yet lives, for ye shall never enter the same abode with me; nay! were it needful I should disown thy paternal hearth by heralds’ voice, I had disowned it. (Exit PHERES). Now, since we must bear our present woe,
- let us go and lay the dead upon the pyre. [Exit ADMETUS.
- Woe, woe for thee! Alas, for thy hardihood! Noble spirit, good beyond compare, farewell! May Hermes in the nether world, and Hades, too, give thee a kindly welcome! and if even in that other life